Born to Kill

by T. J. English

  “Okay, Anh hai. Bye.” Tinh hung up the phone.

  After that, the investigators seemed chipper as hell. But Tinh was strangely depressed. After all this time, after numerous failed robberies and a long streak of bad fortune for the BTK, David Thai still had no idea that Tinh was a government informant. Anh hai still trusted him.

  Cooped up in a hotel suite just a few blocks from the ATF building, Tinh knew damn well what Dan and Bill and all the others had up their sleeves. They were about to make their arrests. They were going to lock up David Thai, Lan Tran, and other members of the BTK.

  When Tinh asked the agents about this, he got nothing. “Why should we tell you something you don’t need to know?” they said, making it sound more like a statement than a question. Even Albert Trinh clammed up, assuming the role of dutiful federal agent over that of confidant and fellow Vietnamese.

  The investigators were so wrapped up in their work that none of them noticed how much Tinh seethed with frustration. Being left in the dark like this reminded Tinh of all the times he’d gone on BTK robberies, not knowing what the hell was happening until he found himself standing in the middle of a jewelry store or a restaurant or a massage parlor with a bag in one hand and a gun in the other.

  Yes, Dan and Bill and Albert were the good guys—Tinh had long since figured out that much. But when it came to dealing with them, sometimes their methods were not all that different from those of his former boss, Tho Hoang “David” Thai.

  Chapter 16

  Clad in a dark-blue windbreaker with ATF emblazoned across the back, Dan Kumor stood in a small flower bed at the side of David Thai’s house and peeked around a corner toward the front door. Behind him, nine more similarly dressed agents and cops were pressed up against the house, waiting for his signal.

  It was approximately 7:00 A.M., and the pleasant, suburban neighborhood of Melville, Long Island, was as peaceful as a graveyard. The only sign of movement was a sprinkler swaying gently back and forth on the front lawn of a house across the street. Occasionally, some unseen bird chirped a few bars of an early morning melody. If any of David Thai’s neighbors had looked out their windows at that moment, they would have thought it was a typical summer morning—except, of course, for the heavily armed SWAT team in David’s yard, bristling with handguns, rifles, battering rams, and ominous looking “bunkers,” portable protective shields used most commonly during riots and prison uprisings.

  Although the lawmen really weren’t expecting armed resistance from the inhabitants of 12 Davis Street, you never knew what might happen. During previous surveillances, they’d established there were at least five occupants inside the house—David Thai, his wife, Lan Tran, LV Hong, and Number Ten. They knew there were guns inside, but they didn’t know how many or where. Besides Kumor’s crew, another team of ten agents and cops had been assigned to watch the perimeter of the house. But once the entry team burst through that front door, they were on their own.

  As the designated “seizing agent,” Kumor was the lead man on an entry team that included Agent Tisdale, Detectives Oldham and Sabo, and a number of the ATF agents who’d played an ancillary role in the investigation. Kumor glanced over his shoulder at the group and almost smiled.

  The last five months had been some ride, culminating in the sudden decision to move in and make the arrests. Alan Vinegrad still wasn’t ready to move for a RICO indictment, but even he agreed that the arrests had to be made. Given the dangers facing their confidential informant, they could wait no longer. Warrants were issued for violations under the Hobbs Act, a federal statute pertaining to the interstate sale and transfer of guns. The plan was to hold the BTK members in prison on these and various New York State charges until the RICO indictment could be secured.

  Though it was easily the most exciting investigation of his career, Kumor could not say he was unhappy to see it finally come to a head. The personality conflicts between some of the investigators had never really gone away, creating a level of tension that generally fell to Kumor to sort out, making his role as case agent a thankless task. The nature of the investigation itself, with Tinh supplying a steady flow of information that often called for immediate action, put everyone in a constant state of anxiety.

  Of course, given the matter at hand, all of that seemed amazingly insignificant. Right now, with their weapons drawn and sense of mortality heightened, the investigators had become one—a true testament to just how far a little righteous police action can go toward establishing a feeling of camaraderie.

  “Danny, this is Rossero. Do you read me?”

  Kumor had the volume on his two-way radio turned so low he almost missed the transmission from his group supervisor. John Rossero was stationed in a command car inconspicuously parked half a block away.

  “Roger, John,” he whispered into his radio. “We’re set and ready to go.”

  “Okay,” replied Rossero. “Security team in place?”

  “Roger,” came another voice over the radio.

  “Prisoner transport in place?”

  “Roger.”

  “Evidence transport?”

  “Evidence transport is ready.”

  Rossero paused a few seconds for dramatic effect. Then, using the catchy title the investigators had devised for the occasion, he commanded, “All right then, commence Operation Thai-Up.”

  Kumor and his team immediately stormed around the corner of the house, across the front lawn, and up three cement steps to the door. Alex Sabo, the biggest member of the entry team, stepped to the forefront and drew back a hand-held battering ram. BOOM! The ram hit the wooden door and bounced off. Sabo drew the ram back again and slammed the door three more times in quick succession. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

  The sound shattered the early morning calm, echoing down Davis Street and sending birds fluttering. The door flew open and the agents streamed into the front room of David Thai’s house. With their weapons pointed skyward, they separated into smaller two- and three-man teams and rampaged through the house, past expensive stereo equipment and a huge freshwater fish tank.

  It was not surprising, given the hour, that the occupants of the house were still in various stages of slumber. The only reason they were even partially awake was because of the ATF team’s loud and rambunctious arrival.

  LV Hong, who’d been sleeping on a couch in the living room, was the first to sit up, rub his eyes, and try to figure out what the hell was going on. Lan Tran and Number Ten were in a small bedroom in the back of the house, stumbling out of bed when the entry team burst in. David Thai and his wife were in the master bedroom, across the hall from where Uncle Lan and Number Ten were sleeping.

  Dan Kumor led the charge into David Thai’s bedroom, with Oldham and two additional agents behind him. Thai was standing beside his king-sized bed, wearing nothing but a pair of magenta boxer shorts. Before Thai even had a chance to open his mouth, one of the agents had a set of handcuffs on him and was reading him his rights.

  Thai, his wife, and the other occupants of the house were assembled in the front room while a search team of five agents began systematically combing the place. Underneath the bed where Lan Tran had been sleeping, they found a .38-caliber Rohm revolver with six rounds of ammunition. In David Thai’s bedroom, underneath his mattress, they found a 9mm, loaded with fourteen rounds. In his closet, they found another loaded 9mm, this one with a silencer attached. There were numerous loaded magazines of ammunition in the closet as well, along with a bag containing what looked to be precious stones, and another bag containing around $2,000 in cash.

  Down the hall, in a small workroom, another team uncovered a modest bomb-making factory. The agents found pipe insulation and steel wool, tacks and nails, glass jars, duct tape, and miscellaneous other items Thai used to construct his homemade explosives.

  Within an hour, the arresting team had thoroughly searched every room, including a small attic and a garage attached to the house. During the search, David Thai and the other gang members scowled but
never said a word. Eventually, they were all led away in handcuffs.

  A few hours later and many miles away, a similar raid was conducted at the BTK’s safe house in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. In the crowded three-room apartment, a team of ATF agents found eleven young males and assorted girlfriends, including Eddie Tran, Shadow Boy, Teardrop, and other gang members. They were all placed under arrest and taken to ATF headquarters for processing.

  When everyone from the two raids was finally rounded up together, the tenth-floor headquarters at 90 Church Street looked like an airplane hangar during the evacuation of Saigon. A total of eighteen people had been taken into custody, with warrants still out on three or four more. They were herded together into a large, drab waiting room where they huddled in the corners, tousled and disheveled in whatever they’d been able to put on before being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon.

  David Thai, Lan Tran, and the other gangsters took a special interest in the young Vietnamese-American agent who was wearing an ATF jacket. During the raid on Thai’s house, Albert Trinh had initially stayed in the command car with the group supervisor. After the BTK members were in custody in the living room, Albert was brought into the house, where, if the gangsters spoke in Vietnamese among themselves, he might overhear some incriminating dialogue.

  Thai and the others had noticed Albert Trinh at the house and kept their mouths shut. But here at ATF headquarters, their curiosity got the better of them.

  “Are you the same guy who was at the house?” David Thai eventually asked Albert.

  Albert looked Anh hai straight in the face. “Yes,” he stated coldly.

  Thai smirked and looked at the other gang members, whose faces also bore varying levels of disdain.

  Later, Thai and the gang members came face-to-face with Albert again, in a holding cell in the basement of the federal courthouse where they were waiting to be arraigned on charges. The detainees were being asked to give their “pedigree”—place and date of birth, height, weight, and immigration number. As Thai was giving an ATF agent the necessary details, he was looking past the agent at Albert Trinh, who was writing down the information on a clipboard.

  “Can I ask you something?” David finally asked Albert, ignoring the ATF agent in front of him.

  Albert looked up from his clipboard. “What is it?”

  In Vietnamese, Thai asked, “Don’t you have any compassion for your fellow Vietnamese?”

  Albert didn’t miss a beat. In English, he shot back, “No. ’Cause I’m not Vietnamese.”

  Agent Trinh’s answer hit David Thai like a sharp slap across the face. Thai and the other gang members had heard Albert speak fluent Vietnamese—they knew he was a brother. Was this cop denying his own ethnicity? Anh hai stared dumbfounded at Albert, then returned his attention to the agent taking his pedigree.

  In a way, even Albert was surprised by his response. The words had sprung forth almost of their own volition. Later, after he gave it some thought, Albert realized that the arrest of David Thai and the BTK gangsters had been a more emotional experience than he anticipated. Afterward, he could feel Thai and the others watching and evaluating his every move, making judgments about his loyalty and worth as a fellow Vietnamese.

  Albert resented being judged by them. For the past five weeks, he’d listened to the voice of Anh hai as he sweet-talked, challenged, and manipulated Tinh Ngo and other so-called brothers. Tellingly, David Thai never took the risks and did the deeds. He’d used his ethnicity to coerce untold numbers of young Vietnamese males into throwing their lives away. In time, Albert became disgusted by the sound of Thai’s voice, disgusted with the way Thai had poisoned the lives of so many while claiming he cared for them as fellow Vietnamese.

  Why should he feel “compassion” for Thai and his gang of BTK hoodlums? Thai was trying to make him feel guilty—a cheap, reprehensible trick as far as Albert was concerned. Though perhaps poorly worded, his response to Thai was Albert’s way of letting him know that he could not be manipulated. He was saying to David Thai, Maybe that shit works with a young, terrified refugee who doesn’t know any better. Maybe it works with a kid who is so desperate for a sense of belonging and love that he will do almost anything.

  But it sure as hell wasn’t going to work with Albert Trinh.

  The arrests of David Thai and his followers may have been the culmination of months’ worth of investigation, but for Kumor, Oldham, and the rest of the investigative team, the real work, in many ways, had only begun. So much time had been spent frantically trying to prevent BTK crimes from happening that the actual nuts and bolts of the case—lining up witnesses, gathering physical evidence, getting the necessary documents together—had been largely neglected. For about two days, Kumor and his crew were able to savor the emotional satisfaction of bursting in on David Thai and rounding up the gang. Then it was time to get back to work.

  Three weeks after the arrests, in early September 1991, the investigation’s headquarters shifted from the ATF building in downtown Manhattan to downtown Brooklyn, where Alan Vinegrad had an office at One Pierpont Plaza.

  If the investigators hadn’t realized it before, they soon discovered that the young federal prosecutor for whom they were now working was a difficult taskmaster. Vinegrad’s scrupulous and sometimes humorless approach added yet more spice to an investigative stew already brimming with conflicting personalities. The various lawmen divided up the work, tried to stay out of one another’s way, and focused on building a comprehensive, airtight federal case against the BTK.

  With Tinh Ngo as their star witness, the investigators had surprisingly little trouble getting other gang members to “flip.” One of the first to fall in line was Kenny Vu, who’d left the gang a few months earlier and was living with relatives far out on Long Island. Kenny was an important piece of the puzzle, since he’d known Tinh Ngo from the beginning and could corroborate much of his testimony. Rather than face conviction on RICO charges, Kenny reluctantly agreed to testify.

  Another who quickly flipped was Eddie Tran. Like Kenny Vu, Tran had been with the gang from the beginning. But he had grown disenchanted with the way he was treated by David Thai, and with the way he was being coerced into taking part in robberies.

  Along with Kenny Vu and Eddie, the investigators were able to secure the cooperation of Little Cobra, whose testimony would provide valuable corroboration on the BTK’s out-of-state crimes in Connecticut, Georgia, and Tennessee. Eventually, Nigel Jagmohan, the East Indian-Trinidadian gang member who had been beaten senseless by LV Hong and David Thai, also signed a cooperation agreement.

  With five accomplice witnesses lined up, the investigators turned to what they knew was the real heart and soul of the case. There was no way they could successfully prosecute the BTK without cooperation from the people of Chinatown. The basis of any RICO case is the alleged existence of an “ongoing criminal conspiracy.” With the BTK—or, for that matter, any Chinatown gang—that meant the constant extortions, robberies, and terror tactics perpetrated by the gang on merchants and average citizens. The challenge to the investigators was to get those victims to step forward and testify.

  Given Chinatown’s history—a history so vividly reiterated with the murder of Sen Van Ta—the merchants on Canal Street were predictably reluctant to cooperate with the authorities. They may have had universally negative feelings toward the BTK, but those feelings were counterbalanced by a decided lack of faith in the NYPD. Convincing these merchants that cooperating with the United States Attorney’s office might be a benefit to themselves and the people of Chinatown was a slow, agonizing cross-cultural waltz.

  Throughout the fall of 1991, the investigative team went again and again to Canal Street, trying to elicit the cooperation of restaurant and produce-store workers, jewelry-store owners, street peddlers, proprietors of leather warehouses and electronics outlets. Their efforts were aided considerably by Detective Sergeant Doug Lee, the Chinese-American officer who had followed David Thai to Queens the day he purc
hased two dozen bulletproof vests. The vests were never put to use. More recently, Lee was transferred from the Jade Squad to Major Case to help prepare the BTK case for trial.

  With his gentle demeanor and command of all the Chinatown dialects, Lee was persuasive in a way the Caucasian cops and agents never could have been. He was particularly helpful in securing the cooperation of Vinh Tran, Sen Van Ta’s twelve-year-old nephew, the only eyewitness to the cold-blooded murder of his uncle. Vinh Tran was able to identify Lan Tran as the shooter that day, a claim ultimately corroborated by the testimony of Kenny Vu, who had accompanied Uncle Lan into Chinatown on the day of the killing.

  Among other obstacles, Lee and the investigators found themselves fighting the persistent influence of David Thai. Even though the BTK leader was safely behind bars at the Manhattan Correctional Center (MCC) in lower Manhattan, he had a way of making his presence felt.

  In October 1991, two months after David Thai’s arrest, a strange pamphlet began to appear in Vietnamese restaurants, at newsstands, and in video arcades around Chinatown and in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. The pamphlet consisted of a collection of poems written by David Thai, along with some twenty-five pages of advertising from local Asian merchants. The ads gave the impression that Thai’s efforts were being endorsed by the Asian business community; in fact, they’d been photocopied from phone books and newspapers and used without the knowledge of the merchants.

  Taking a page from Uncle Lan, the unofficial bard of the BTK, Thai’s writings betrayed a wistful romanticism. Composed in florid Vietnamese script and gathered under the heading “Immortal Love Poems,” Anh hai’s writings were an attempt to explain and justify his current predicament, both to himself and the people of Chinatown. In one poem, titled “Carrying the Vietnamese Blood,” he wrote:

  Leaving my country, I swore to build a new life…. /to create my own soul, my own identity ./Even if my body shall be destroyed,/my blood scattered to every corner of the world,/or jailed in a dark room,/my heart shall not fail to remain free…. /How I remember the grudges/which I hold forever inside my heart./But having Vietnamese blood in my veins,/I learn to smile without shedding a tear.